Hand Eczema

I haven't had hand eczema since I was about 17,  and was consuming the daily trays of school cafeteria food which were laden with soy based products I'm sure; and wasn't paying attention to the ingredients listed on anything.

I've read in more than one place that people are prone to being allergic to the foods they crave the most or vice versa and after being diagnosed with having food allergies are mortified over the thought of living the rest of their life without whatever that is be it Pillsbury crescents or circus peanuts candy.

I mentioned the latter because when I was just about 7 or 8 years old I got a hankering for Circus Panuts™ after trying them somewhere and making them my new favorite candy on the spot.

I begged my mom to get me some, and she soon came home with a family-sized bag of the things,  probably the smallest bag of them sold at the grocery store.

I remember digging in to them, and them being delicious until about half way through the bag, when I got sick of them, literally. 

Not in the stomach but more like when you chew too much tobacco and lose all desire for more. 

Circus Peanuts™ are basically soy flour, sugar and God knows what to put them in the ballpark, at least, of being the color of real peanuts (like some opinions about presidents, I thought they looked too orange to be real).

But, I had gotten an acute craving for a food that I would turn out to have an intolerance for, with eczema being my body's way of protesting it.

I rolled up the cellophane bag of orange candy, put them in one of our kitchen cabinets, and never ate another Circus Peanut. That was 54 years ago; and mom, if you're seeing this, you can throw them out if they're still there.

I went to a dermatologist who diagnosed my condition as " hand eczema." I remember thinking: isn't there a more Latin sounding term like rosacrucia Manis for the disease?

But, cutting certain foods out of my diet after switching to a chiropractor / nutritionist for my care signalled the end of hand eczema in my life. 

Now almost 40 years later I get an invitation on Facebook to participate in a clinical research study on some new kind of topical cream that has been invented for sufferers of hand eczema.

I suspect that this is related to me being excluded from another study at the same place about a year ago because I had no medical history, as far as having been prescribed much of anything since the age of 19. Maybe that made them suspicious. Just a record of having been diagnosed and treated for hand eczema 41 years ago.

I'm not inferring that the research people unlawfully dug up my medical records and discovered it, that would be "underhanded." Facebook probably provided them with the tip after snooping through my blog posts and personal messages, and|or from listening to everything I say around my phone. Nothing underhanded about that...

So, I called and made an appointment.

 I've not had problems with eczema for 40 years except on occasions when I ate something without knowing it's ingredients until after my fingers would start itching as if it was emanating from under the skin, and I would go back and read on the side of a box that I had eaten a bunch of hydrogenated soybean oil, perhaps in the guise of Malted Milk Balls™ which have, as a prime ingredient; listed even ahead of sugar and chocolate: hydrogenated soybean oil.

It might be problematic to show up for a hand eczema study without having any symptoms of hand eczema, I lamented.

I went out a little later, and was on my way to get some food at the Brown Derby -something healthy, to help me overcome a cold that has persisted the past 3 days which came on right after I consumed some protein powder that wound up having soy in it.

A gland swelled up in my throat, which then became scratchy, leading to sneezing and then ultimately a slight fever and, well, a cold.

I made it no further than the box outside our place where people place food donations, where I espied two cans of red salmon -the kind I can't even afford because it's $5 for a can half the size of one of pink salmon.

At that point, I could have turned around and gone right back inside without walking to the store, because I had enough to make a meal out of red salmon, and myriad other things in my cabinet.

Then I saw it.

A box full of Pillsbury "Crescents" croissant type rolls loaded with soybean oil both in the hydrogenated form and as a whole oil.

Sugar; white flour (bleached, at that) -it was all there- a recipe for hand eczema;  there for the taking.

If I I chow down on those, then show up on Monday, they will probably admit me into the study and start giving me $75 per visit, over the next 4 weeks or whatever they said.

I'm in a quandary over the idea of making myself sick so I can get paid to research some new kind of cream which very well could make me even more sick, to the point of maybe killing me.

The fine print in the little booklet of "possible side effects" that comes with the newly invented cream might state as much...

I've always likened cream for eczema as being like spray paint to coat the leaves of a dying tree with green, as an alternative to transplanting it into good soil and giving it clean water and sunlight.

 You are only treating the symptoms, and not the root cause (no pun intended).

That's where it stands right now. 

I'm looking at my cans of salmon and there's the box of croissants that I grabbed...

Pillsbury Cresents; original crescents; air fryer ready; no high fructose corn syrup; no colors from artificial sources...

There's the little Pillsbury doughboy,  looking pretty excited as he stands in front of an enlarged picture of the product. 

It might as well say quick baked hand eczema, ready in 15 to 18 minutes.

When I was a kid, I used to interlace my fingers and grind them together, often to the point where my skin (my epidermis) broke and lymph oozed out, and eventually blood if I kept bearing down.

I still can't decide if it would be worth the suffering just to make 500 bucks by participating, I would be poisoning myself right down to the roots...